About Drupal

Drupal is an open source, free content management system. It allows you to create and edit original content, organize it, limit access to certain users, and track who is accessing the site. It consists of a set of core features, and may be expanded by adding modules.

It is based on a series of roles and permissions. You may create users who belong to one or more roles. Each of these roles may have permission to view or maintain different areas of the site.

These are the roles we use, in order of lowest to highest privileges:

1. Ordinary users who are not logged in have the anonymous user role.
2. Users who are logged in have the authenticated user role.
3. Users with the manage role can maintain most content and add new users.
4. Users with the dev role can add new features and edit menus.
5. Users with the admin role can add and update modules.

It will not be necessary to add additional roles or users for this simple site. The general public will all be considered anonymous users.

Editing content

Data in Drupal is stored as nodes. Each node has certain basic information, such as a title. More complicated data types will have more fields to edit.

The manage menu has options for listing and editing various types of content. You will see it when you are logged in as a manager.

The manage menu also has an option to list all content. It may be filtered to display content of a specific type.

Many nodes may be edited directly when displayed. Hold the mouse over the center of the content to edit, and a set of small icons will be displayed on the upper right, as in this example:

Hold the mouse over each icon, and a description of its purpose will be displayed. Of particular note are the edit and delete icons.

Textarea fields, used to contain large areas of text, may have an edit toolbar above them. Again, holding the mouse over an icon will reveal its purpose. To apply them, first use your mouse to select one or more words, then click on an icon to perform its action, such as bold or italic text.

 

Galleries

You may create any number of photo galleries.

Users may view a list of them by clicking the galleries button, and navigate to individual galleries.

To create a new gallery, hover over the Galleries button and click "add new gallery".

To edit a gallery, open it, and you will find tabs to manage images, sort them, and add new ones. In the magage and sort views, there is a "cover" radio button by each image. Click the one next to the image you want to use for your cover image for the gallery. You can rearrange the order of photos by dragging the little arrow icon to the left of the image.

 

Images and formatting

You can add an image to any page or blog posting. When editing a text area, note the little bar of icons near the top:

Select a word or phrase, and click on the B to make it bold or I to put it in italics. The next two make a selected block of text into a list. The chain icon lets you create a link to another URL.

The last icon is for inserting images. Put your cursor where you want the image, and click the icon. You will see a form whee you can enter image details. The most common operation will be to upload an image. Click on browse server. You'll see a list of images on the server.

To upload a new image, click the Upload link (upper left), then click on browse to select a file, then upload it. You can use the resize button to make it smaller.

Now click send to FCKEditor to send it back to your post.  Here you can adjust alignment and spacing. You can also make the image a different size here.

If you need to change or modify an image, click on it, then click on the image icon.

 

 

 

Translations

Drupal supports translation of content into other languages. We've installed English and Spanish.

First, create your new entry. Below the Title field is another where you can select a language. If you want to add translations, select English when you first create the page. Now save it.

At the top you should see a set of tabs to view, edit, etc. Click on the one marked translate. If you don't have one, it's because you didn't set your language to English - if this is the case, edit the page and select English, then save it again. Now you'll see that tab.

Click on the translate tab. You'll see a place to add a Spanish translation. Click it, make your edits, then save it. Now you can see different versions by switching your langlage preference.